What am I doing in this godforsaken country? Really? Why do I stay here?Even when it's not raining, it's grey, depressing and generally a shithole. The cost of living is stupidly high and there's nothing but poor public transport in return. It's so dull. It's dirty. This place offers me nothing except that it's where all my stuff is.
I really would love to get out of here.
The truth is, I have a good work position here. I'm higher up than I could ever expect to walk into in any other company, so moving would invariably be a big step down. But that may be something I'm now willing to do.
If I had a visa, I'd go to Hawaii.
Actually, my ideal would be to get into what I'd really love to do - children's books. But that is pretty much an impossible dream. The system is set up to make it ridiculously hard to get a book on to the shelves. Agents, publishers - they're walls. But if I could sell children's books, I wouldn't need a studio. I'd be a one-man production house.
And that would mean I could live anywhere I wanted. Wouldn't that be nice?
Yeah, an impossible dream.
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The UK is the same of course - so much money to pay and nothing to show for it. I hate it and will be leaving as soon as the opportunity arises. My dreams are as unlikely as any but even the slightest possibility of them happening is reason enough for me to get away from this dungball of a country.
History is all we have here. People don't visit the UK for what it is, they visit because of what it was.
I don't think I've seen a good new kids book in years, Golden Books seem to have been the standard since I was a kid and probably a few years before that but I don't really see new ones from those guys in any stores.
I imagine there's a Golden Books truck driving around the world and the people inside can hear kids books being written with special hearing devices and they bust in Capone style in order to keep a hold on the kids book racket.
Well first you have to WRITE a children's book to get it rejected. If you do write it let me know. My co-worker doesn't seem to have a whole lot of talent and he just got a book agent. If you can get me a couple of pages I'll send it 'round.
Write the damn book and then complain about how you can't get it published.
But I have written some! I can't imagine you know of an agent who hasn't, at some point, laughed their asses off, put that laughter into a stock rejection letter and sent it to me.
Nothing is impossible if you put your mind to it. Work on something in your spare time, drop the blog and start your children's book?
It's worth a crack. My coworker doesn't submit first draft until October 17. If you wanna get your submission kit together in PDF form and send it to me, I'd be happy to give it a go over here.
Wow, that's a really nice offer, ugtv. I really appreciate that. I'll look at getting something together and be in touch.
Yep, London is grey, wet and usually encourages suicide due to the weather but is there a way you could self publish and just get your children's books out there? Im sure you have thought of that already but I just wanted to mention it, why not start a new blog specifically about your books and have snippets there so that people can get a taste and if they want, place an order for the book from you? It could work and the internet gives you a world wide market place to dive into?
You know, that's a really interesting idea, Steve. I imagine self-publishing to be expensive and really difficult to actually get books on shelves but it is definitely something worth thinking about.
Putting stuff on the web is tricky only because the stuff I have done is very much for the younger children who just wouldn't find it even if they could use computers. I'm not sure then how I'd get parents to find it either. The internet is a far easier place to attract interest in projects geared towards the adults.
Definitely something to think about there.
A pal of mine got this letter from the creator of Broom Hilda. I liked it enough to post it up on my Tumblr: my place of inspirational (most often silly things i find on the web)
I thought i'd share it with you Bit!
http://tinyurl.com/6z8nmy
may the force be with you. ;)
it may be hard, but keep that chin up.
-jx
also you should look into lulu.com for self pubbing.
Thanks Jeaux, I'll check out that lulu site. I've had a quick browse and it looks really interesting but I'm going to go through it in detail tomorrow. Thanks for that.
That letter from Myers is great and would give anyone hope. Fifteen years? That's perserverence!
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